The Parrot and the Turtle
by Lothar
Summary: Otacon coordinates Snake and Raiden's surveillance mission on Guantanamo Bay, but a tragic blow and a possible discovery make a simple mission anything but. Hetero romance later as chapters are added.


"One hundred years. An insignificant interlude for dominating humanity."  
  
Otacon had stared at the files for hours, picking apart the minute details of code that glowed before his eyes, taking sips of coffee, Jolt, or even caffeinated mints to keep himself awake in between. Though he was fascinated by the interconnected twists and turns that the code took, and forming a simple whole out of a complex assemblage, his mind was beside itself not to focus on the juiciest piece of the enigma, the twelve names. Twelve men seemingly distanced by decades of history, yet painfully alive as apparitions that tore at what gentile sanity he had left. It was times like this that he felt satisfied to concentrate on his work to ward off the gnawing memories, while at the same time attacking the past through his cognitive tasks. It was his own power, his own armies.his own empire, one with defenses buried deep enough that excavation would result in the hardening of its defenses and its resolve. And yet, they could still touch him under his soft underbelly if given one of many ample opportunities to do so. Best to lose oneself in the vulnerabilities of another's code than needlessly contemplate those of yourself, he thought.  
  
Cryptography was the passion of many of his colleagues, friends, and passersby on the Net throughout his career, if one could call youth a career. Yet, he saw the challenges of it more as a means rather than an end in its own right. He disliked crossword puzzles and jumbled word games, yet delighted in finding patterns of encryption and discovering the flaws built in to any protection scheme, be they intentional or the mistake of errant programming. Secrets were there; something was important enough to keep hidden. It was one of the explanations he told himself to keep guessing at any scheme that the names of the Patriots might reveal. He guessed beyond the A=1, B=2, etc. type of formulas; rather insulting for them to think anyone would use that, or to insult them to think they would put that as even a basis for a more complex form of encryption logic. Hexadecimal was possible, binary was tempting, but relationships to other languages had whet his persistence. Those with any significant political craftsmanship were usually skilled in employing the versatility of language for their ends. They could allow the geeks, the bitheads, to make their messages unbreakable by NSA supercomputers for the next ten thousand years. It was in the titling, the packaging - the names on which they wanted to leave their own marks. The grunt work of mathematics they would leave to people like him.  
  
And people like E.E.  
  
Calling her that invoked some comfortable distance and excruciating intimacy that he wanted to avoid but knew he could never shake, a probably never should shake. "Emma" was for those times he wanted and needed a good cry. Those times had increasingly incurred space between them as the months passed since E.E.'s death. The tears were just as potent, but they seemed to be more rehearsed at times, or perhaps he wanted it to be rehearsed; his sorrow gaining a sort of comfortable consistency. But he knew that one doesn't properly grieve for consistency's sake, or to keep the memory of the deceased alive. That was during sweetly sad, happier rituals. One grieves to grieve.  
  
"I just.wanted you to see me.as a woman."  
  
"I can never look at you that way, E.E."  
  
Did he want to balance out the lie of the effectiveness of her trojan cluster with the truth of how he really saw her? He sometimes clenched his fist in a mock-stabbing motion towards his heart for being so honest to a fault, or for the sheer embarrassment of his step-sister's confession or disappointment that he couldn't have fit her wish. Most of the time, it was out of all three as they flashed before his eyes and raced through the top of his head.  
  
"Chest pains?" a gruff, raspy voice asked behind him, a bit to his right. Otacon quickly felt his surroundings again - the collective hum and glow of his machines in the windowless dry wall bunker that he and Solid Snake called a workplace. He quickly lurched his fist away from his chest initially, but slowly let it fall to his side before scratching the back of his head as if it had been there all along.  
  
Otacon swiveled his chair towards Snake, keeping the same position; nothing going on, of course. "Nah, it's just.how I concentrate sometimes," he explained. Snake sensed otherwise, but wasn't one to read into something that insignificant too deeply.  
  
"Anyways, any new ideas on the names on the list?" he asked. They had often referred to it as "the list," as if saying "the Patriots" was overkill. The list had gained a sort of referential intimacy for both of them, making a full reference to it unnecessary.  
  
"I played around more with the context of the time frame of their deaths, or quote-unquote 'deaths' if the case may be. The problem with 1905 isn't that it's hard to make any historical connections so much as there's too many to make." The events that had gone through his mind flashed through his eyes once more, not unlike newspaper articles skipping across a roll of microfilm. It had been a surprisingly long 14 hours.  
  
Snake wasn't terribly familiar with that era. He had had a passing fascination with the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1899 and the abilities of the Fists of Righteous Fury to disrupt the imperial efforts of the Europeans and Americans. It took a certain knack for a grass-roots army to believe they could magically dodge bullets and call upon dead soldiers to join their ranks. Snake didn't speculate too much on what that knack was exactly, but he vaguely admired it nonetheless.  
  
A fan had started in the ventilation shaft to cool down the room and its computers prone to overheating. "The Russo-Japanese War is an obvious one. Too obvious, maybe. Then there's the Tangiers Crisis."  
  
"Why too obvious?" Snake asked; a bit curious as to why Otacon assumed that he had inside knowledge on the event.  
  
"Militarily, the war wasn't especially crucial. True, the Russians almost lost their entire Baltic Fleet, but compared to the political and diplomatic ramifications of the war, the battles were almost a sideshow," Otacon mused.  
  
Snake thought for a moment. "Military, politics, same difference."  
  
Otacon was surprised with the flippancy of the statement, considering who was saying it. "Not necessarily. You're thinking it terms of 21st century warfare, when in most cases the line between military and political matters is blurred. In the early 20th century, the line was a bit more solid; in part because military maneuvers couldn't be executed with the greatest of smart-missile and special ops ease." Otacon himself thought about the ironic near-flippancy of his own statement for a moment, but continued. "The Russo-Japanese war launched a series of political events. Hundreds of thousands of Russian workers that year used the losing war as a rallying cry to demand representation in the government - and hundred were mowed down by Czarist troops when they marched on the Winter Palace. Even the military went political with the mutiny on the battleship Potemkin in protest."  
  
"So what's so 'obvious' about it to link it to the list?" Snake asked. He had gotten used to Otacon taking his time to get to the point, but he predicted a longer than usual history diatribe.  
  
"The Czar was eventually forced to found the Duma, or parliament. It didn't have a lot of power, but it was a sign that a thousands-year-old order was coming to an end. It looked like a democracy, but in many ways it was the Czar's way of buying time to keep his rule."  
  
"Until the Communists took over. So you're saying that because the Czar set up a puppet government in 1905, the Patriots were trying to compare themselves to the Czar by setting up their own puppet White House," Snake figured.  
  
"And that's why it's too easy a connection; and too tenuous at the same time. That year symbolized the beginning of the end for the Czar. As far as we know, the Patriots are still in power and will continue to be in power for the foreseeable future. They're not predicting their demise, are they?" Otacon asked half-rhetorically.  
  
"Probably not," Snake hoped. The enemy could be formidable and still not trouble Snake; he was Solid Snake for a reason. If the Patriots were comparing themselves to a leader who would fail, that just made them weird and confusing. That was a situation Snake had dealt with in times before, and it always left a bad taste in his mouth.  
  
"By the way, how has coordination been going on Guantanamo?" Snake asked.  
  
Otacon knew he had let a good mind game make him neglect something. "It's getting there. I've arranged for a ferry to get you from the Keys. I can't say the same about cloaking you just yet," he explained.  
  
"You can leave that to me. My gear on the other hand probably can't come along on the same trip. Still have that contact in Puerto Rico who can get the goods there?" asked Snake.  
  
"Yeah, though she's a bit more skittish about being involved when she heard about Arsenal. With the right compensation, I think she'll come back aboard. Last I've heard, her boat touring business has taken a few hits in the last year." Otacon hated sounding so exploitive, but missions were missions, and they couldn't exactly become a charity when they were trying to be charitable in the long term for everyone.  
  
"Make sure that she does," Snake said in a gruff, commanding voice that lacked an air of domination. "In the meantime, I have to get Raiden on the codec and brief him on the situation."  
  
"What should we tell him, given what he's.what has he been doing anyway?" Otacon asked, interrupting himself with the expectation that Raiden's demeanor might have changed over the past few months, even if by a little.  
  
Snake took a slightly deep breath to collect his thoughts. Gossip wasn't one of his strong points. "Still recuperating; he's about to go back to VR training to reinforce some skills he gained from the mission. Then there's his kid on the way, but Rose is taking care of most of that stuff, of course."  
  
"Of course," Otacon said, gesturing with his open right hand to agree in body language. He thought of what sort of father a man with Raiden's childhood history would make, then thought best not to explore that idea. Another puzzle for another day.  
  
"I say we just let him know straight out. This mission shouldn't have that many surprises - standard surveillance operation."  
  
"Famous last words," Otacon felt obliged to say as a sarcastic reminder.  
  
Snake curled his right lip a little bit. "No, it is standard. I've done this before, only this time I need a hand since we have to cover more of the base in a small time frame. They might have added more security cams and changed their patrolling routine, but it's nothing that can't be overcome for what we're doing."  
  
"Just make sure that you get some audio if the opportunity arises. That's less subject to questions of authenticity," Otacon said.  
  
"I know, but you try bugging the commander's office - it's a bitch and a half just making sure the grunts don't hear you in the vent shaft," Snake complained.  
  
"Right, but in case you do hear something."  
  
"I know, get the amplifier turned on and find a place to camp for at least two minutes." Snake thought about Raiden doing this. "You know how much Raiden ever did for surveillance training?"  
  
"VR is good at running hide-and-seek kinds of missions, at least compared to simulations involving chaotic brute force. But how much Raiden got I couldn't tell you," Otacon replied with a slight shrug.  
  
"Eh, worth a shot. Guess I'll have to ask him now." As Snake prepared his codec to make his contact, Otacon swiveled back towards the keyboard and the lit screens. It was almost time to feed the parrot, a job he usually loathed because of its obvious reminder. Still, it was beginning to pick up some of his own phrases, which made the job a bit more bearable. Sometimes he would spend some time with the parrot just to teach it some of his sayings. It wouldn't be long until an "I miss you, Hal" would escape from its beak. He made himself not be saddened by it any longer. It was purely unscientific, but a part of him would think of it as Emma's spirit still speaking to him. It hurt him a bit hearing it, but the hurt lessened as time went on, though never to disappear completely. He would feed the parrot soon - just not right now. He'd rather not feed it right now. 


End file.
